Run the Jewels
by Cicatrick
Summary: Han/Leia. Pre-ESB. In which Cic attempts GFFA fic in grateful and admiring HanLeia Secret Santa appreciation for the brilliant Corellian-Smuggler. You're amazing C-S! (Some adult themes.)
1. Chapter 1

Run the Jewels

Wedge Antilles crossed the hangar at a clip, slowing as he approached the battered YT-1300. Wouldn't do to show his haste. It took a Corellian to know, Wedge supposed, which cards to disclose and which to hide. That was doubly true when the person Wedge sought was a fellow Corellian, and the reigning Yavin sabacc champion besides.

An irregular series of sparks issued from the ship's belly, offset by low, cajoling curses. When Wedge whistled a few ironic notes of "Corellia Ho!", the soft scolding and hydro-hissing ceased. A tall man unfolded from under the freighter, bottle slotted between long fingers. Goggles dangled like a youngling's slingshot from the pocket of his trousers.

Han Solo plunked his fuser on a rusted bench. Swiped sweat from his forehead, watched himself scratch at an insect bite under the sleeve of his olive tee-shirt. Wedge waited out this lazy stage business, not so easily thrown as the rookies Solo fleeced of their sabacc credits. And finally Han hooked a thumb in his belt and raised his beer to his lips, peering down the bottle's length with typical wry wariness.

"Antilles." Han anted the first word, stingy as it was.

"Solo. You meet anyone from High Command today?"

"Oh, sure. They just left. Didn't you see 'em?" An oil-grimed hand inclined the Falcon's dingy hull. "Dodonna really appreciates my art collection."

Wedge resisted the languid sarcasm. "Well they're looking for a pilot. Called me in." He scanned Han's impassive face. "They pull your tags, too?"

"I got no _tags._ " Han was almost delighted with his own indignation. "I'm not a listee, remember?" As usual, he made _listee_ sound like _fool_.

"Okay." Wedge gave a short breath. "You didn't hear this from me. Command wants—"

A klaxon blared shift turnover, sending variant forms milling about the hangar. In the chaos Wedge switched to the language he shared with Han. "...volgoth un Corellisi."

Wedge had often noticed that Han avoided speaking Corellian (except when swearing; Wedge agreed that sometimes _kriff_ couldn't compete with the mighty Corellian _fuck)_. Even when beings all around him lapsed into their own tongues—exhausted, or in their cups; seeking connection to lost homes and pasts—Solo stuck to his Basic. Spoken to a rhythm both clipped and elastic, laced with slang from multiple planets, it seemed to serve him as linguistic alias.

Han hewed yet to his cryptic habit. "Want, huh."

"Fine. _Nyiad._ That better?"

"Naah. Don't care neither way, me." Han slugged at his generic beer. "S'just, different price codes apply to _want_ and _need_."

"Funny," Wedge said evenly. "My father used to say a Corellian never turns his back on someone in need."

"Yeah? That's real nice." Han's half-smile flashed hard and merry. "I don't turn my back on anyone. Good way to get bladed."

Wedge bit the side of his tongue. Sometimes, so much life, liberty on the line, it grated him how Han wore his detachment like superiority. Many (...many) recruits found that jaded grin attractive, but to Wedge it seemed tilted toward some secret, bitter joke.

Yet Han bristled at Wedge's visible judgement. Out came the index finger; Wedge made a note to add this sighting to Hobbie's tally on the barracks wall, underpinning some wager with Wes.

"Ahhh, cut the shit, hero. You fly just fine. And you're a listee." Han jerked his thumb back at himself (this gesture, Wes insisted, counted for half marks). "But _I_ didn't sign nowhere, and I don't come free. So why you here, throwin' _your_ job at _me?_ "

Again Wedge scanned the hangar. The new shift had mostly settled in, leaving space for discreet Basic. Still he said it surreptitiously, between his teeth: "It's a partner mission. In Coronet."

Almost imperceptibly, Han stiffened.

"Sure, I could get the..." Even now, Wedge balked at using the galvanizing name aloud. "...the _agent_ through the Imp blockade _._ Get her planetside. no sweat. Thing is, then...hells, I'm from Gus Treta!" Wedge pointed his own finger. "But _you_ —"

Like sand in a Tatooine chronoglass, Han's irises drained green to ash. Wedge made his point fast: "Valle Coroneti. _Estok_ Coroneti. Yeh?"

The surly-proud curl to Han Solo's lips was answer and warning at once.

The gritty inflections lurking under Han's Basic had long told Wedge where the smuggler had come up. Estok was rough. And Han was so tough, so remote, it was easier to imagine him raised by loth-wolves than actual folks. Surely not loved and fed, like Wedge. Or Leia. Or Janson. Or Luke. Or Chewie. Or pretty much anyone they knew.

Wedge had no plans to blab such insights. But when he joined the Rebellion, Wedge swore blood-oath to its success. As he made and lost dear friends in the ranks, this broad allegiance had assumed vital focus, prioritizing his own small group. And no matter what Han Solo liked to project, he had clearly formed certain attachments himself. So, Wedge knew, Han wouldn't hold a grudge for this bruising intrusion. What he _wouldn't_ forgive is if Wedge didn't tell him—

"Like I _said._ " Han's tone was cold-rolled durasteel. "I ain't no fuckin' listee."

It was then, over Han's shoulder, that Wedge caught the telltale flash of white across the hangar. The agent. The attachment. Heading to the sleek cruiser next bay over.

"Alright, alright." Wedge said mildly. "I get it. I guess there's one other Corellian they could send with her. New pilot, real, uh, _hotshot—_ "

Han snorted. "Guy from Shaugh?" His eyebrows gave lofty emphasis to Coronet City's poshest district. "Oh, good. _Good_ fit." Finishing his beer, Han dragged the back of his wrist across his pitying smirk. "Look. I like Carlist, so here's a piece of free advice: Rell's a goof. He'll get your agent busted up in East Coronet."

 _I call,_ Wedge thought, his subtle version of the tribal swagger Solo wore brash as his bloodstripes. _You cocky son of a bitch._

"Well kest." Wedge jerked his chin at the trim figure in snowy blouse and khaki fatigues, slowing along the Fortunas Rexi. "I sure hope he don't."

Han's stare flared on the small braided woman cordially greeting the Rexi's handsome captain. Bowing at the waist in his coveralls, Prixati Rell hailed her back with flawless etiquette. His Shaughnessi-flavored Basic rich and smooth as blue cream: _You honor me with your notice, Your Highness._

Beer bottle met bench with a savage click.

"You heard wrong, Rogue Three," Han snapped. "Command don't run her high-risk." He ticked quick points off on his fingers: "No city. No sneak-jobs, no...no _partner_ shit." His voice took on a kind of brusque plea. "And if they _did_ , she woulda come to—"

"Han. She's going to Coronet."

For the first time in their exchange—maybe for the first time since they'd met—Han looked openly at Wedge, knowledge dawning hot in his wide eyes. Burning away that cool guard of gray, the gold was furious and ardent. Terrified. _I knew it,_ Wedge exhaled inside his own mind, vindicated and relieved to see the feeling Han couldn't hide. _I knew it._

Looking back at the pair beside the Rexi, Han folded his arms over his heart, lips rounding before they flattened into a terse line. The hurt and worry were guarded, took a Corellian to spot it. Took Corellian tactics to exploit it.

"Never mind. It'll probably? go fine. Seems like a good fella," Wedge said. "And I mean. Rell _can_ fly."

Han gave a mirthless sound. "Not even in my cargo hold, Antilles."

"He's Coroneti."

"He's from Shaugh." Han bit out the correction.

"Eh. That's good enou—"

"He's from _Shaugh!_ "

Wedge paused to let the color rise in Han's neck.

"He _is_ enlisted, though," Wedge said. "Trained and briefed. So if someone rats 'em out? Boarded at the blockade, say, or stopped by Imp officers in the city..." Wedge shrugged. "It's a paired-up show. So I'm sure Prix can keep her saf—"

Words broke from Han Solo's throat. His native speech hard and dirty as urban duracrete: _Mintak Leia. Mi. Mi! Nyot enseft._

A pair of massive brown eyes blinked in Han's direction. The comprehension of the name could almost be read on red-tinted lips, softly parting in shock.

When he returned to himself, when he met her gaze, Han's own eyes closed in instinctive failure. But when he opened them on Leia Organa it was with as much seething defiance as Han could muster. Smuggler and princess stared at one another, complex communication firing along invisible channels. Something between them crackling so it seemed the industrial lamps in the rafters flickered. Until, without another word or look to anyone—no gesture, no expression in any tongue—Han Solo spun and stalked up the ramp into the Millennium Falcon.

But the man with the urchin accent and no attachments left the main hatch cycled open.

And it was with his own measure of Corellian self-congratulation that Wedge Antilles thought: _So much for not turning your back, Slick._

XXXXXXXXX

Han was starved, but too mad to make supper, even with the cooker working, now. Yeah: in the hours, _plural,_ that he'd awaited an audience with Her Spyness, Han rewired an entire appliance. When he'd been sure that Leia was hot on his heels, Han wriggled under the galley counter like a mechie beneath a speeder, seeking the strategic advantage of occupation. The replacement filaments clamped in his lips were sharp, but Han kept his mouth viciously shut as he should have in the first damn place. If he severed his tongue on a wire, well, at least he wouldn't _talk_ when the little commando showed up.

But she didn't. Even with Han so showily distracted—even with the ramp left down, the main entry open to the outside—chrono past nine!—Leia Organa did not arrive.

So here Han was, ten after ten in this backwater jungle night. Dropping onto the acceleration couch, shoving a ration bar into the idiot noise-hole in his face. He slung a long leg up onto the dejarik table, stretched the other one under. Hair damp from the 'fresher, Han wore gray sleep pants and a tee-shirt Chewie caught from a cannon at a Taris swoop-race. The pants were ripped at the outer seam; the shirt was purple, tight, and printed with an unidentifiable yellow mascot. Ugly as the third hell, but who was gonna see this getup tonight? Chewie had gone off scouting a new base with Luke and Janson, some sithforsaken frozen planet.

Sullenly chewing his last bite, Han glared at the blanket folded neatly on the seat. Thinking of the night Leia and Luke showed up, a little lit from one of Janson's homebrew parties, wanting to learn sabacc. Month or so after the Death Star, that: Han planning to leave for Tattooine, just hadn't told anyone yet. The kid held drink surprisingly well, but bombed out quick— _you're a helluva shot, kid, but you can't bluff for shit—_ and headed back to the barracks. Chewie, an early riser, took his sickening bark tea to his hammock.

Her Highness, though. Her Highness stuck around. And Han...alright, couldn't believe his luck, even with its proof fanned in his fingers, manifested in shifting flasks and sabers. Since she'd blasted a hole in a chute and ordered him through, he was uncomfortably aware that the Rebel Princess intrigued him. The whole galaxy knew, and Han did too, that she was smart, beautiful, bereaved, brave. But over that card game, indecently late and newly alone, she became _Leia,_ unsettlingly fast study. Leia, ruthless, playful, witty. Leia: drink-flushed and frowning with a focus Han found startlingly sexy, staying again and again for one more hand.

When Han came back from a futile dig through the pantry for a bag of the puffcorn snacks she liked, there she was curled up on the curved seat. Rosy cheek to rounded knees.

And Leia looked not quite _cold,_ not on this humid moon, but so unshielded in sleep that Han felt intrusive in his own damn ship! He stopped, hand rising to the back of his neck, other braced at his narrow hip. His impulse was to pick Leia up, carry her to the berth with the attached sleepsack that trundled from beneath his own bunk. But then he thought, hells, how would that be for her? Waking tipsy in a big man's grip, halfway to his cabin...creep city.

So Han fetched his spacer's jacket from the locker. Shrugged out of his vest, emptied ninety metal whatnots from its ninety damn pockets, and eased that under her braided temple. As he bent to gentle the jacket over her shoulders, Leia nestled in, mumbled _thngyou._ Han smiled faintly at her manners; was this the same girl who was all barbed verve over her relentless losses at Corellian Gambit? He'd been unsure about showing her no quarter, but instinct told him she'd demand it. So Han slapped down the win, again and again. A rare full grin bursting from him when Leia laughed in outraged abandon: _Oh fasten your shirt, you gloating bandit._

As he straightened, Han was not truly aware of his growing attraction, affection, respect. He knew only odd constriction in his chest, heavy enough that he coughed softly into his fist as he went off to his own bunk.

A month later, on a supply run to the Rhinnal textile market (well after he'd been expected by a desert Hutt), Han slowed at a weaver's table, spotting a deep green shimmersilk-yarn blanket. Handling the weave carefully to keep from snagging it on his roughened hands, Han froze at the handwritten Aurebesh label: _Soft and warm as a lover's whisper._

 _Your lady will adore it,_ the weaver coaxed.

 _Who says it's for a lady?_ Han shot back, prickly with what he didn't know was panic. _A guy gets cold in space._

 _Bet you heat a bunk just fine_ , _Corellisi_. Her violet eyes stroked the identifying stripes up Han's thighs.

...well. Normally, Han would've followed the weaver wherever she had in mind. Game for something mutually enjoyed, then mutually left behind. But this time, Han surprised himself by smiling an easy decline as he paid for the blanket, no haggling, even. Loping off Han did not allow himself reflection about what it meant, this strangeness in himself, this mingled extravagance and sexual stringency.

On the return trip Han tried to blend the costly purchase in with his beloved, beat-up ship. Chewie tilted his head, watching Han launch random tosses of blanket at couch, aiming for a nonchalant effect. Growling _just hope I don't make one outta you, pal,_ when Chewie teased, _Which creature do you seek to catch in this net?_

Wookie mockery, impulsive celibacy, gangster chit set back sixty peggats? Worth it, to Han. All worth it when, back on base, Leia and Luke came aboard as had become their habit, to welcome him...home? and Leia exclaimed over the luxurious blanket. _Yeah, had that kickin' around._ Han said, rifling the cupboard for glasses _. Thought you. Someone! might wanna. Use._ Wincing even as he talked, as he couldn't stop. _Ain't new. Old thing, old...thing,_

Watching Leia gracefully arrange the wrap over her bare shoulders, Han swallowed hard. Warmed by the pleasure and surprise, the—the _reassessment_ in huge brown eyes even as he avoided two pairs of bemused blue. _Don't lookit me like that. See how nice you think I am after a few hands of sabacc._

Han tossed the crumpled ration wrapper at the blanket. Past time to quit this shit. Clearly Leia _,_ no matter what Han lately...hoped, could care less about his dopey ass. Or _couldn't_ care less. However the stupid Basic saying went; the closest concept in Corellian was _who gives a fuck._ Han snorted balefully. Should've yelled _that_ at Antilles in the hangar. Damn sight better than _Take Leia myself. Me. Me! No one else._

He let his head fall to the back of the couch, glowering at the ceiling panels. By now Han knew it was Leia, the thought of Leia, that had made him refuse the weaver's proposition. Leia who made him accept one last run, again and again, Hutt debt be damned. Leia who kept Han out of friendly beds at familiar ports where he'd often spent friendly time. Thoughts of Leia keeping him _way_ too occupied when he was alone.

But Leia did not think of him.

No, she did not think of him. Even when High Command issued a damned Venn diagram of a mission plan stamped _Han Solo_ at its center—Corellian.- pilot.- _partner,_ Leia did not—

Footsteps tripped light and quick up the ramp.

"Han?"

Han's eyes widened, green-gold, on the woman before him in the main hold. Leia's face was clean of makeup, braids knotted at the back of her neck. She still wore her blouse and fatigue trousers. A large, stuffed satchel was slung across her torso.

She said, "Aren't you ready to go?"

His lips opened in a fat, indignant _O_.

"To bed, yeah," Han said, devoid of innuendo.

"Ah." Leia's eyes fell on the misshapen yellow animal emblazoned on Han's chest. Her pink lips twitched. "What is that?" she asked, her voice low and droll. "A loth-cat?"

"It's what I sleep in." Han dropped his leg from table to floor. "Because it's late. _Late._ "

"Sorry, no sleep yet. They've given us clearance."

"Whoa. Whaaa..." Han held up a palm. " _Who—_ "

"Perhaps you are an owl, little friend?" Leia sweetly asked the creature on Han's shirt.

"Your _friend,_ " Han jabbed his finger either into the mascot's snout or his own chest, "is honored with your notice, Your Highness."

Leia smiled down at Han with a tolerance made more infuriating by the rarity of her height advantage. Then she turned, neatly looping her satchel over her head to one shoulder, and headed for the cockpit.

Han sat gobsmacked. When he'd been fixing the cooker, waiting on her, he'd pictured Leia surprised by his public outburst. Probably pissed. Confused—she'd have gleaned her own name, yes, and the gist of his insistence. But she was royalty. There was no way she knew _Olys Corellisi,_ especially not his harsh urban dialect. He'd expected her to demand explanation. What Han hadn't imagined, not at all, was _this_ —what the hell _was_ this...giddiness?

Han shot to his feet, went after her. Stopped halfway with a half-curse, turned back to punch the code that closed and locked the ramp. Then strode to the cockpit, indignation redoubled by his detour.

"Not so fast, Your Worsh—"

Leia swivelled in the captain's seat to greet him, one soft boot swinging above the floorplates, other knee bent near her chest. One arm cocked on the armrest, the other curled at her cheek; tip of her smallest finger clamped between her teeth.

All in a punched rush, Han let out the breath he'd drawn to holler at her with. Leia was _that_ gorgeous, there, fresh-faced and impish and _in his chair_ in the shapely flesh as she so often appeared in his recent dreams.

"Let's get going, Flyboy."

Han slapped the high arch of the hatchway with both palms. Leaning into the cockpit, he croaked, "Who d'you think you _are?_ "

Those big eyes danced. "Your mission leader."

"My... _?_ That wasn't my offer!"

"Your offer? It sounded to me like an order."

"You don't know your Corellian, Sweetheart."

Her impossible fringe of lashes flickered. " _My_ Corellian?"

Han blinked. In Leia's face, was that...uncertainty? hope?

Before Han could react, Leia stood straight. Cool command snapping into place over any softness, quick and opaque as shielding plates.

"I can't pay you." Her tone of unmistakable provocation.

Immediately Han remembered the shame that had engulfed him the last time she said something similar in this spot. _That is what you'll receive._ This time the hot wave he felt was outrage. The gall of her, talking a year later like he was some damn bounty hunter. When these milk runs paid a fraction of what Han cleared hustling spice—not that anyone knew Han's cut except Rieekan, sworn to secrecy. Han correlated payment with respect, couldn't let it get out he was charging a pittance. Shit, not even that; when you factored in the rate of gangster interest, Han was dangerously overdrawn at the Bank of Rancor. Yeah, he raided Rebel wages at sabacc, but hey, a guy needed a hobby, right? He ran cheap jobs fast and tight, he helped out mechanically around the hangar, ate mostly his own rations, and none of this, _none_ of this had lifted him into the black, in the ledger of Leia Organa's judgement?

"So ask _your_ Corellian." Han lashed back. "Ain't Rell free?"

Resting one knee in Chewie's copilot's chair, Leia reached for her satchel, withdrawing her datapad from a nest of meticulously rolled garments. "Prixati is Corellian, yes. And he flies very well..."

"Well bully for Prixie." Han stepped hard into the cockpit, claimed his own seat with surly weight. "Easy to learn on dad's fancy starliner—"

"...but you," Leia continued, sitting on her knees, eyes on her illuminated screen, "fly marvellously."

Han's mouth closed, then fell open. "Repeat that."

"You're the best pilot on base," Leia said, her gaze rising to his. So economically honest that Han didn't know if he was touched or irritated as he waited in embarrassing hunger for her elaboration.

"...alright," he said at last. "If I'm the best around—and I am!—how'd I end up understudy to Antilles and Rell?"

She looked back at her pad. "Mission planning is not _entirely_ about your ego, Captain."

Han's brow lowered like clouds: _Captain._ It rankled, now. The formal remove of it, where _Flyboy_ and _Hotshot_ simmered, even when her underlying heat was anger. Sith it all, now Han felt foolish; always extending himself to Leia, then retracting, burned.

Doing it to her in return. "My ego? Listen, Princess. My _ego_ ain't any more plugged into this show than the rest of me."

"Well, there's your answer," Leia retorted, head jerking up.

Han goggled theatrically around the cockpit. "Thank kest. I been lookin' _everywh_ —"

"Do you know what Prixati Rell has that you don't?"

"A plum stuck in his gob?" Han said, meanly mouthing around Rell's posh vowels.

" _Commitment._ Rell has commitment." Leia's knuckles paled on her datapad. "Yes, Han, you're the best pilot. You're extremely smart, tough, yes! Brave. A natural leader. If you think I didn't say all of that in the mission briefing..."

She shook her head in pained amazement. Han's brows knit in vexation. He didn't want his virtues enumerated after all, if it hurt her.

"But you don't care," Leia went on. "Wedge cares. Rell cares. But I can't pay you enough to care; I can't convince you to care; I can't make you belie—" She choked on a small, bleak laugh; closed her eyes. "Oh, I've tried."

"Leia. I—"

She said it so quietly, without opening her eyes: "You said you'd take me. You, Han, and no one else."

"Fuckin' Antilles," Han finally said. "He's translating, now?"

"Actually," Leia gave the ghost of a smile. "Threepio." She opened her eyes, merciless and level. "Is it accurate?"

"...yeah." Han looked away first, fiddling with the ripped side-seam on his pants. "See, Coronet, it can get." He scowled as some crucial thread unravelled in his fingers, nearly baring his thigh. All gods, he felt exposed enough as it was. "Look, what gives, huh? Thought the brass had you planted!"

Leia's smile faded. Han bit his cheek; he hadn't mentioned her quartermaster position to be nasty. In fact Leia's straight-backed acceptance of Dodonna's assignment struck Han as...defiant. Dignified; anyone with eyes could see she wanted to be out in the field. But Leia refused to whine, there were no demands for royal favor, no political parrying. Day after day, from his work on the _Falcon_ 's roof, Han watched Leia hoist boxes that near outweighed her. Tracked her moving efficiently around base delivering supplies herself, all smiles and first names and graciousness.

Some new recruits would never guess that Princess Leia was more than beautiful, tragic ambassador.

But by night, hours after her shift had ended, Leia sat on the Falcon wrapped in the green blanket, kaffe-wired to her datapad. Scribbling strategy and analyzing maps as Han tinkered with some part, as Chewie and Luke watched holoflicks—all staying up in unspoken accord with her.

High Command might not've slung blaster bolts alongside Leia, or tumbled with her into a trash compactor, but that was no excuse for grounding Leia as a soldier. They knew of her lethal aptitudes, knew she'd withstood the Empire's torture. Resisted Darth Vader! Damn sure knew it was her world was gone from the cosmos like a punched-out molar.

It was her score to settle, and they damn well shoulda let her.

Now Han cut his eyes to Leia's face. She'd never spoken of frustration, exhaustion. But gauging her up close, he saw the difference between warehouse and mission. Something vital in her, _to_ her had been missing, these last few months. Because eighteen hells, Leia looked alive, tonight. Vivid. Spirited, rather than dutiful.

 _Free._

Han blew out a breath, folding his arms across the...owl? lothcat? at his chest. "I'll need a bottle of whiskey. You and the kid been drinkin' me outta—"

Leia's eyes flared with triumph, with something that made her drop her stare, made her bite her smile almost shyly. "Done."

"The good stuff, mind, no passin' off any of Janson's fermented vines—"

"I know what you like."

She didn't say it coyly. Leia said it with real familiarity, her eyes warm on him. And there it was again, that rogue pressure in Han's chest; by now he knew it was desire far more faceted and lasting than lust.

He cleared his throat. "What's the job?"

Leia leaned forward on her knees. Leaned forward in the co-pilot's seat, overextended for her height, a defiance of balance that only added to her spark. Ah all the gods, _I know what you like_. This was Leia, the Leia Han somehow always knew, Leia as she was in truth: intense, joyful, brilliant, unstoppable. If she'd stapled flimsi contract to his forehead in that moment, Han would open a vein to sign it.

Across the console she leaned close, closer; he leaned to meet her.

With Leia's face near enough to kiss came her smile like the sun, two suns at once. Her nose almost to his, as though even here, they could be overheard. Leia whispered it to him:

"Power. Gem."


	2. Chapter 2

"No." Han Solo breathed against Leia's cheek.

Nodding, Leia sat back in her seat, shivering, thrilled. She was used to Han's sly scorn, how it tilted negotiation in his favor. This was not his protective negation. This was honest disbelief, his green eyes boyish with awe in his tanned man's face. That odd, plaintive mascot printed on his chest rising and falling with accelerated breath. Hands braced on his thighs—one bare, one clothed—expression rapt and shrewd, Han fixed on her story in a way Leia found startlingly sexy.

 _Power gem._ Leia was not surprised by Han's interest: no true spacer was ignorant of, or could resist, the galactic myth. The rare stones that could double time or split it in parts, that confounded all signals, shields and paralytic beams.

Intelligence had surfaced that a Rebel spy had hidden a power gem in a hotel in Coronet City. Such contraband relays were common practise, but the next operative had never made pickup, and the original spy was in the wind. Just a sliver of gem, if the data was to be believed; but even that amount could disrupt the current stalemate between blockade and evacuation. If the Rebels retrieved the crystal, they could jam Destroyer signals long enough to get safely away to their next station. But if the Imps discovered the...

With a short hum Han turned to his switches and buttons; as he spoke to the traffic tower, the Falcon hummed to life beneath them, around them, waking from dormant support to power. Punching the liftoff sequence with a swiftness that suggested imminent invasion, Han took the ship easy and smooth through the dilating iris of the hangar roof. They cleared the atmosphere and flew in calm silence for several minutes.

When the blockade loomed in the distance, cold and sinister as an iceberg, Han gestured at the co-pilot's panel.

Leia felt both pleasure and pressure at Han's prosaic expectation. She didn't fly often as quartermaster, but spent frequent time in the sims, controls set at Corellian Light Freighter Y-1300. Knowing always it would come to this, just her and the obstinate captain of the Millennium Falcon, running the flaws in this wall in unspoken tandem. And as they slipped secret and sleek through the barrier of Destroyers, evading radar, Han didn't praise or manage Leia's performance. He simply worked alongside her in keen concentration that felt like trust.

Once he judged that they were clear, Han flashed Leia the same brief thumbs-up he gave Chewie. After entering the co-ordinates for the brief hours to Corellia he leaned back in his seat, peeling his gloves off before lacing his hands behind his head. Yielding into the bright wash of hyperspace with a dreamy satisfaction that Leia found intriguing and endearing at once. But under that, the maddening paradox: was the void of space the only thing in which Han Solo could wholeheartedly invest?

"Which hotel?" He appeared to ask it of the ceiling. "Naaah, lemme guess. The Lamb? The Alibi?" Han shook his head. "No. A jewel, so. The Number Five Kasava—"

"Something with an _E_." Leia waited for the screen to power up, flustered by her rare failure to summon a word. It was Old Corellian, didn't lodge in her lexicon.

"Not the Emerzel." Han jerked his gaze to Leia.

Nodding, Leia passed him the pad. Han read, stroking the stubbled angle of his jaw.

"This is a swank joint, Princess." Han said. "No shakes to the places _you_ been, but Wedge had me thinkin' you were goin' into..." his half-smile slanted between bashful and blunt. "Boosted goods. Spice. Fights." He gave a nihilistic shrug. "East Coronet."

"No such excitement, I'm afraid," Leia said dryly. "That we'll spend the entirety of the mission holed up in a... swank joint, was the deciding factor in my being cleared to—"

She trailed off. Thinking of the Coronation portrait of Breha Organa that Dodonna had put up in the briefing room. Leia knew it was churlish yet how she hated her, that anodyne watercolor royal who was not her mother. Too pale, too mild; but her trademark pendant was just right, painted with a detail not afforded her face. A firestone in an unlovely, organic shape that conveyed muscular power: The Heart of Aldera.

This Queen stared down on her daughter innumerable mornings after. Leia avoided those eyes lest they see how, in Leia's dreams, the Death Star and Alderaan merged into one obscene orb. Waking Leia tearless, waking her wheezing. Unable to sleep all the rest of the night for the cold horror of this eclipse.

She had formally requested placement on several missions, only to be vetoed by High Command: _Princess Leia has a duty to the universe,_ Jan Dodonna declaimed at the conference table. As though Leia Organa, breathing being, were not in the briefing room in the flesh. _Princess Leia cannot be risked._ Risked! Investing Leia with the royalty afforded an ivory king in an archaic game, protected, passive. And she set her teeth so she did not ask, in that acidic way she knew she had: What of the duty of a stillborn Queen?

Often, Leia thought, High Command was simply uncomfortable with her wrath. Not Carlist, who shared it—but even Mon Mothma avoided the mess of Leia's grief, as though she bore darkness that could shatter in battle and splash free, stain the entire galaxy.

Leia _was_ born with a sense of impending doom and oh, if she'd told her mother of her dreams, the glossy black mask, the pressurized hiss. If Leia told her mother when she fled to her bedchambers as a girl, instead of just pressing her ear to Mama's chest, would fate have changed? Her mother: Breha Antilles, Regent Queen, none of her subjects knew her cinnamon scent. None knew the feeling of her drowsy embrace. _My darling. Find your sleep_. Leia had tried murmuring it to herself, in the dark, against the jungle sounds just beyond her screened port. But there was no maternal comfort in Basic, in her own voice, cracked and small in the vast night.

Yet speaking succor in Alderaanian was impassably painful.

Her favorite childhood tales, told to her by Bail, held that power gems came from beneath Alderaanian seas. And Leia understood that Carlist brought the Coronet dossier to her first, because it was hers. To go into that briefing, Leia braided her hair close to the skull, as she had seen in ancient pictures of warrior cultures. The Dodonna War took four hours and tested the limits of her father's clever diplomacy and mother's warm wisdom, but Leia left reassigned to action, and with a rough plan of a mission.

 _Power gem._ Even now the words retained their talismanic texture, the voice of her father. They were poetry, they were hope, resurrection. But, in the part of Leia's heart that had never been pacifist—the warrior part, the part never captured in portrait—the words were rage.

XXXXXXXXX

Han set a steaming carton of noodles before her on the dejarik table. "How we gonna play this?"

Leia snapped her eating sticks in two, greedily breathing fragrant steam. "Mon Mothma suggested brother and sist—"

"You can't be my sister." Han said it quickly, face twisted in peculiar horror.

"You call me _sister_ all the—" Leia paused. _Did_ he, anymore?

"No. Nuh-uh." Han ticked his own sticks side to side, some extension of his index finger. "Luke could pass as your kin, maybe, but not me. Not there. They'll see—" Han stumbled in his lecture, then brightened. "Corellians are tall."

"Wedge isn't."

"Taller'n you, UnHighness. Move over." Han slid into the bench where Leia perched in her precious wrap.

"Alright, it's not height, exactly." Han said, at length. "It's a way of...it's individual, but we all _knous_ —uh, know it."

Delicately pursing up a noodle, Leia looked at Han, industriously winding his own. She hadn't heard him speak Corellian before tonight, aside from frequent obscenities that, if anyone could make a protocol droid blanch under his brassplate...

She liked it, she decided. Liked what the piquant language did to Han's voice, or what his voice did to it—rich, dark and—

"I don't see us as siblings either." Leia blurted.

Han stared at her a long moment, his half-lidded eyes opaque.

"After all," Leia said, dropping her gaze, her cheeks heating unaccountably. Probably the spiced broth. "I don't speak your language."

"...right," Han said on a sigh, poking a spool of noodles into his mouth. She felt a humming energy from his thigh, flank, shoulder, intermittently brushing close.

"The gem," Leia said carefully, "is in a particular room. It's been reserved."

"Oh yeah?" Han pincered a slice of h'nemthe yam. "That's good, we don't have to sneak from—"

She took a breath. "It's the honeymoon suite."

Han coughed droplets of broth into the back of his hand.

"Whuugh, got a pepper. Didja say...?"

Leia reached into the side pocket of her bag, withdrew an identity case. This she slid to Han across the table's slick checkered surface; pushing away his carton, he flipped the case open to its opposing panels. To two holo images: their own real faces, labelled with fake names.

" _Lon Scorpio?_ "

She cringe-laughed. "I know. It's awful. I swear the slicers consult some random name generator." Laughed again. " _Vykk_."

"Hey, that's an actual existing name, not some...holoporn idea of..." Han looked closer at the pictures, tilting them to catch the iridescent Aurebesh. Leia—that is, Cira—wore a very good black wig bobbed in Coruscanti fashion, her irises blue-skinned. Han remained the same down to the scar on his chin, as though he was so essentially Corellian that there was no point in disguising it, even if they weren't going to his own home planet.

Two birthdates, check.

Two titles delineating marital relationship.

"Oh, _Sweetheart._ " Han's distinctive lips struggled against his smile. "I thought you'd never ask me."

"Why buy the nerf," Leia shrugged, "when you can get the milk for a bottle of whiskey?"

He laughed hard in that way she loved, that head-back laugh that squeezed his eyes closed. "Ah c'mon. I'm not _that_ cheap a—"

"What do you think?" Leia turned to face him, drawing her knees to her chest, under the blanket.

Han grinned down at her, alight, affectionate; almost pleased? Tapping the painstaking false ID, he teased, "I think you were real sure I'd say yes."

She reached for her noodle soup, knocking it awkwardly with her knuckles. "It was Carlist's suggestion, _I_ didn't—"

A big hand caught the carton before it spilled.

"S'fine. Lotta Corellians marry from outside." Han lifted a shoulder. "They'll see I'm a spacer—" he said this with unconscious pride— "but they won't know you're a Princess, so it ain't too wild that we, uh."

Their eyes met with a sort of expectant click, just as quickly broke away. Han scratched his jaw, feeling his own face unexpectedly heat.

"Speaking of custom," Leia said with desperate diplomacy, "It's winter, in Coronet. Correct?" She ducked her pink face to her notes. "I read that it's culturally significant. Something about gifts? Jewelry?"

Han's hand tightened on the vessel he'd just righted.

Winter meant gift-giving in Coronet, yes. Often jewelry: at least, if you had the cash. The city's East Sector—Estok—did not, but Corellians were earthy, primal people, so the season also held an undertone of lust. In crowded dive bars, lovers clutched close to the brief heat of torch songs. Bleak tenement doorways strung with loveleaf to trigger kisses, the deeper the better. Sex was free, after all. As the old saying had it, _ehin Vintner—_

"In winter, all Coronet is rich in love," Leia quoted from the holonet. "That _is_ lovely."

"Ain't it? Til a whole lotta bills come due 'bout nine months later."

Pierced by Leia's compassionate, curious eyes, Han bit his idiot tongue.

 _Vintner._

Also known as _snow-moon_ , if you had the credits to wax poetic. To the young Han Solo, it was plain ol' cold. A month of snow; a month of weaving through shoppers in Treasure Row, looking in pretty, tempting windows. Doorways closed to the likes of him; nothing to eat, nowhere to go, not until he had something to show for it.

Garris Shrike liked rare metals, precious stones. One of Han's earliest memories, the poison signet flashing from his ring finger—and _fuck_ did that sear pure hells if it nicked when he hit you, make you sick. Shrike exulted like a Hutt over each day's take. At that age (six?) Han had no use for anything he couldn't eat or wear. Was he born pragmatic, or just born broke?

Leia was still looking at him. Respectful, expectant.

"It's about." Trying to imagine what Prixati Rell would tell her, Han lurched from one syllable to the next. "Stuff, uh. Folks. Food?"

Here was what Han Solo could not tell her: Vintner, to him, was rich marks. Matrons harried and laden, waiting for turbolifts in the plazas. Revealing rings and bracelets when they hailed hired speeders; milling on the mag-lev train platform, providing access to watches and satchels. Easy prey for a kid like him: clever, deft, dextrous, brash and not about starving to death.

He looked to his right; Leia was researching. Intelligent and thorough, so exacting in her own lifelong process. Her fine, stubborn chin set into the cup of her palm. He glanced over her shoulder at the backlit screen. Watched her thumb through holozine pictures of steaming kaffe, clothing in deep hues. Jewel-toned cosmetics; jewels themselves.

 _Say it with Corellian stones,_ read the breathless prose, _in_ _arboreal green, carnal rose._

What a load of—Nope. No. Vintner was shivering in holed soles; it was stealing with a poison fever on Treasure Row. Scaling walls into untended dormer windows in Shaugh, rifling drawers and dressing tables for sparkling markers of babies, lifedays, marriage.

"Is there meaning, behind these gift-gems?"

Han glanced at the ceiling. "This girl I knew. Sali. Few years older. She had this booklet about it, flimsi, old. I'm talking Clone Wars. Kept it folded over—" He made a motion, not smarmy but street-impartial, as though tucking something into a bra.

"A tract?" Leia asked, fascinated. "Are the stones something of the Old Gods, or the Force, or,"

"You sound like Luke." His smile flashed amused. "Sal weren't. Ah, the religious type." A hardness again. "No. Was a guide to jewels. Like for men, to give to women. A thing on Corellia, right? Intentions."

How it used to irritate Han, Sali's exclamations as they searched some walk-in closet. _Rubesk, emerzel. Diment! Sea-stone. Gold:_ maybe Leia was right, it _was_ like a spell, a prayer. Sali ended up keeping a haul, ran off. Han did not tell. He took Shrike's beating and wished her well.

He shrugged. "It's rich-people code: pink for new babies, blue for a new house. Real faux-pas to get it wrong, like. A guy can't be be bringin' a red rock to the office _Vintnerpartek._ "

"Why? What is red?"

"Sex."

"Green?"

"Proposal." Han drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. "No—yes. It is, but." Han rubbed the creases on his forehead, did not say it. _Commitment_.

Leia looked up then, so close and direct that Han caught his reflection in her eyes. Ah, beautiful, beautiful Leia. Glowing with—faith, yeah, that was just the word; fluency returned now, when it was painful. Leia was _faithful_ : so sure Han Solo was on the verge of conversion. That he was worth—

Han got roughly to his feet. Stretched past his natural length to reach the highest bolted locker, found what he was looking for at once. A vicious little vibroknife, Han's first, edge honed with ground Devaronian poison gem. Blade sheathed in a sling that once fit Han's boyhood leg; flat hilt tinted acidic green, knowing hint to the toxin within.

Garris Shrike: dead, but always good for a few mean tricks.

Han put the knife onto the table on front of Leia. She reached to slip it from its sheath; Han caught her wrist. " _Bane_. Don't pull it till you gotta."

Instinctively she took his meaning, even though he'd lapsed again into _Olys_.

"Prixati Rell would give you a helluva emerzel." Han said it like a joke, but felt a vertigo as he spoke; bad slide to his smirk. "You got Lon Scorpio."

Drawing back her hand Leia slipped her fingers, gentle and possessive, into her silk net. Green, too, the deep gleam of loveleaf. Her whisper soft and strong as the weave: "Who gave me this?"

Han's throat worked. He felt Leia's bravery, felt her nerve. Felt, again, her pull to conversion.

 _No._ It wasn't the odds against princess-and-spacer that Han had dreamed of defying, since the day he met her. It was princess-and-grifter. Leia Organa, galactic warrior; Han Solo, busted spice-smuggler.

He broke her searching gaze and shrugged. "Some thief."

Hurt bloomed like a handprint across Leia's face. Han bit his tongue to stop her name. Turned his back, strode towards the cockpit.

"We'll be outta hyper in twenty minutes," the captain tossed over his shoulder, as though to any rider paying for passage. As he had once spoken to the kid who was Leia's true believer, who hadn't needed payment to save her. "You might wanna get dressed."

Life was running the jewels. Nothing else.


	3. Chapter 3

"...huh _,_ " Leia heard from the main room of the honeymoon suite. "Uh..."

Mostly Han had been tensely quiet since Leia left his cabin, where she had changed into Cira, her Coruscanti alter ego. When she'd walked into the main hold—in charcoal synthleather leggings and dove ribbed sweater, bobbed black wig that strangely flattered; eyes skinned blue and edged in kohl that made her lack of trademark lipstick somehow daring—Han had not spoken to Leia at all. He looked up from where he leaned against the ring wall, bloodstriped and booted, shirt deep beneath his clavicle. Collared navy jacket instead of vest. Looked at her a beat, expressionless, then went back to adjusting his heavy blaster.

No matter: Leia felt his eyes on her as she moved past him to the dejarik table, snug leggings giving her hips a certain rhythm, and took up the weapon he'd given her. _Troth._ The Alderaanian word, the home-notion, came to Leia before she could stop it.

Troth gifts could be humble or extravagant; they could be offered in public or private, no restriction as to gender, sexuality of giver or recipient. The only rule was that troth be chosen with purity of spirit and insight into one's intended. After this individual treasure was offered and hopefully accepted, a pair was pledged to wed.

In his troth pledge, historically broadcast to all Alderaan, Bail Organa had given Breha Antilles a dazzling sapphire choker. But private family legend held that Papa trothed Mama a shawl he'd knitted himself, for she was often chilled with illness. Mama wore it always in the Winter Palace, enfolded tiny Leia in it with her to read and nap. Bail had a sense of humor about his limits, making small Leia laugh with impressions of himself chewing his tongue as he inched through stitches, following the lessons of palace textile artists. _Papa! Was it fun?_ Fun an overriding concern to five-year-old Leia. _Oh no. Not fun._ Bail would shudder, then smile. _So_ _I must have loved Mama very much, yes?_

Papa's shawl was poignantly ugly, loose and lumpy, warty with knots. And later, in her military cot, fingers worrying the edge of the anonymous coverlet she'd assigned herself, Leia could not sleep to know that it was lost.

Taking up the vibroblade, Leia's lips gave a bitter twist. She was tempted to share the jest with Han, watching her now with his practised distance, blaster back in holster, arms folded across his chest. Gods! Must Han always be so watchful yet so unimpressed? When he should be proud of himself; his brutal gift, delivered with callous pragmatism, was apt proposal for the two of them! A perfect match: false couple, extinct custom...

She wanted to joust with Han in her own tongue, readily laced with her own venom.

Instead Leia planted her right boot on the bench where he'd sat so close, then so easily left. Her sole stamped flat on the delicate wrap, she stretched into the acute angle of her bent leg. Leia flipped down her pliable bootcuff, worn high over the knee in Coroneti style. Met Han's eyes as she strapped his knife to the outside of her thigh, rolled leather back over leather to hide it.

And Han made a small choked sound, something between approval and agony. His eyes an alchemy, stone to gold, and she—

"Hell. _Sixty_ hells!"

Still in the suite's antechamber, Leia peered into the console mirror, hurriedly peeling skins from her famous eyes. Unpinned the wig from her even more famous braids—for all the difference any of it made. Turning from her reflection, Leia hissed ruefully at these earnest efforts: the combat training with Luke; sim flights, aliases, synthleather? All this to spend a mere few hours locked in a boutique hotel with a mercenary swindler, searching corners and drawers with an energy scanner.

All the way from the hangar where they'd left the Falcon, all the ride crammed into Han's side on the mag-lev train, no Corellian had regarded Leia—Cira—with the slightest suspicion. There were no Stormtroopers, no Imperial agents checking papers. So she could have saved herself the trouble, could have hung from her passenger handle in full royal regalia, trademark double buns.

The night train had been crowded, the end of some workweek and the festive season; spirits high, spirits flowing and freely shared. Music played and people laughed and danced in aisles, moving with the motion of the repulsorlift, on their way downtown to clubs and lounges. The women decked out in leather and synthfur vests, lipstick and lashes, cleavage and jewels, everywhere glittering stones. _Abundance,_ Leia thought, unable to lose the analytical eye that had been essential to her training. The men were plainer, though none so spartan as Han—though what _was_ it with Corellian men and their careless display of bare chest?

These people were no threat. They were convivial, generous— _where you from, small bit?_ An elderly woman asked Leia warmly in Basic. In uniform, an employee of the transport authority, but one who was handing out drinks in fashion of no usher Leia had ever seen. _Coruscant_ , _Ma'am,_ Leia said back, and the woman squinted. _Ah, sahsahlah,_ she said, waving a beringed hand. _Noh._ _You have about you the look of Naboo._

 _Sahsahlah? Noh sah-sah-lah,_ Han bit the syllables through a bright, irritable grin. Long arm slung in a passenger loop, he reeled Leia closer with the other. _My wife knows where she's from._

 _Volgoth noh petchuck, boy,_ the usher said with amusement. _Just making talk._ She clicked her painted fingers and someone supplied her with a disposable cup. She poured a liberal slug of nameless liquor and handed it to Han, with a corrective air that reminded Leia of her childhood governess. Han rolled his eyes, took the shot and threw it back—not with concession but as though to avoid further inconvenience to himself. _Unimpressed,_ Leia thought, as she politely accepted her own smaller measure.

So these were, so far, her mission tests. How Han must have been laughing up his sleeve at her earnest preparations, if he were the sort of man to invest even that far. She could almost hear his drawl: _Playin' spy, little girl?_

"Princess. Y'might wanna—"

Leia moved through the broad, open archway into the dimly lit main room. Music was playing, something smoky, yearning. Han stood with broad back to her, facing the bed. At first Leia believed this was the issue; of course there was only one bed. Even if said bed _was_ rather smaller than she'd expected, dressed in sensual fleeces, synthpelts and velvets. But she was shorter; she'd fit on that sofa over—

 _Oh._

She hadn't noticed in the low, sultry light. But as she turned her head Leia saw that a section of wall behind the bed glittered. Studded into the plaster and paint were hundreds of gems, jewels of all colors, shapes and sizes, chips and chunks.

It would take hours—hours, _hours?_ Maybe a day—to scan them all, to find the one charged piece. Checkout was at ten o'clock the next morning; it was now after eleven at night, and the concierge had reminded them there was another couple in line for the room, warning Han to keep one eye on the chronometer.

How foolish she'd been! How arrogant, how presumptive, thinking them in-then-out, quick as a whip. Blithely planning where she'd sleep, even with them hyperlagged there'd be no time for—

Leia brought her hands to her braids, made them into vicious fists. She was not fit for missions; she should have stuck to stacking cans in the mess. What would she have done in real danger? On watch over the lives of actual beings?

 _Dantooine. It's on—_

"Leia."

It was rare for Han to use her name. Rare enough that it brought her back, back from the crystalline burst. And when she looked at him, Leia understood that the jewelled wall wasn't the problem, either. Not for Han: Han looked at Leia and opened his hands, and she saw that his skin was stippled with tiny shining beads of sweat.

"The lights are locked like this," Han said, almost apologetic. "The music, too. I checked." He opened his arms. "And the _heat._ The heat is stuck."

XXXXXXXXX

 _Sweet fucking sixtieth hell._ That was a hell Han Solo had forged his own damn self, thanks very much. And it looked a lot like this.

First thing he saw was the bed. One bed, which: sure, made sense considering it was the honeymoon suite. Something out of a sappy holoflick, all fuzzy. And kinda small, when you factored in that he was over six feet tall, not some narrowback besides, _and_ that he'd be sleeping not next to his bride but royalty who wore a knife strapped to her leather-clad thigh.

Not the woman of his wildest dreams, because who could've dreamed her? A year after he'd met her on the Death Star, Han still didn't quite believe her.

Han was still trying to name her: _Princess. Sweetheart. Your Worship. Your Highnessness._

 _Sister._

These were safer.

He'd avoided saying her name from that first day. It never sounded lazy as he'd like. Lately the name was especially fraught: it recurred by night, in his stupid bastard perfect dreams. And there _Leia_ came out shy, it came out wild, it came hot and choked. It caught in Han's throat with pleasure and awe. Softened or quickened by ivory skin, by auburn hair, by rosy lips, by mutual laughter. About the only way that name hadn't been said, in the private scape of Han's sleeping head, was bellowed at Antilles across the Rebel hangar!

That was good for a few hells, at least.

Next thing he saw was the heat. Han felt too warm, but at first he thought it was this equation of him, Leia, and too-small bed. The _Do Not Disturb_ code she'd pressed into the doorpanel, the locks she'd thrown. The chair wedged there as though she really, really wanted them to be left alone.

But the hearth was on. Artificial fuel-flames, intense, and unlike the cruder fires of wood or trash he had huddled by as a child, wouldn't burn out. With the room already overheated, especially for Corellians.

Shucking his jacket, tossing it at the couch, Han crossed to the master control panel. It was bolted over with an engraved brass plate that advised that temperature, lighting and music had been carefully targeted to optimal comfort for the greatest amount of beings, and were therefore fixed in place. _Thank you for your co-operation._

Han grit his teeth. He had never, not ever in his life, been able to stand it. That fuss-assed, I-know-best...kest, the brasstone even _looked_ like Goldenrod.

Speaking of the music. A bassline and pulse that did not pause but undulated; woven through this, a throaty vocal. Han almost laughed—class joint, right? Lecturing all _average sentient_ this and _optimal comfort_ that, yet the tactile sound was pure sex, straight outta any cantina in East Coronet.

He moved back to the bed. What, no stuffy instructions for that? No focus group getting together and—

—and the wall was covered in glinting color.

At least he wouldn't be sleeping beside her.

XXXXXXXXX

"Are you _serious?_ There's no cold water?"

"No," Leia called from the 'fresher. "Just warm and— _owwwich!_ " She jerked her hand back from the faucet. "—and Mustafar." She sucked her finger. "Did you comm the desk?"

"Naaaah. Why would I do—oh wait yeah! I did, but only _ten fuckin' times_ —"

Now Leia _did_ laugh. Catching sight of herself in the mirror: hand at her mouth, dewy with perspiration, hair frizzing at her forehead, violet eyeliner smudged. She looked crazed, and decided she liked the effect. She might as well like it, everything was a mess and somehow it was funnier that she couldn't see Han's face, just hear the caustic cheer of his voice, pitched to reach her above the sex orchestrations on the speakers. She'd always appreciated Han's sarcasm, felt at home with it, especially on a base filled with idealists. Their humor was a shared language, making even battle some multi-leveled conversation.

 _Or maybe it's manipulation,_ Leia's wiser self advised her wilder reflection. Why must Han Solo be the only thing in the galaxy that both courted then evaded her anger?

She used a hand towel to swipe at her neck. At first she'd thought that Han was being dramatic about the heat. _Ah yes,_ _the ancient truism,_ Leia had said, _Corellians run six hundred forty degrees higher than mere mortals, who would melt like ice pops if exposed to the heroic temperatures at which you—_

 _It's eight,_ Han said, with a stern dignity only slightly effaced by the fact that his head was hidden in his shirt as he pulled it off one-handed, the other pointing blindly just to her left. _Eight degrees higher. That's not bragging, Sweetheart. That is fact._

 _Oh no, not bragging, not you—_

She'd stopped teasing when he emerged from his shirt, tossed it carelessly to the floor.

Han Solo was beautiful.

Oh, of course Leia had always known Han was handsome. Everyone knew that; he did too, as utilitarian about his good looks as he was about everything else. He was a popular sight around base, and Leia wasn't immune to his working in his undershirts in the heat. Even in his silly sleep-shirt on his ship, she had wondered—

She had never seen him shirtless, and he was gorgeous. Lean and muscled in a work-honed way that he wore with appealing disregard. But there was something else about Han tonight. Something about how he looked, gold in the low, dense light, warmth that held all the way to his eyes. Relaxed, _actual,_ as though he could shed his languid poses and impassive masks with his clothing.

Han had attacked the challenge so intently that Leia wondered if it was in some apology. Or maybe he was selfishly piqued. Stacked odds drawing him closer, back into the capture phase of his parabolic trajectory around her, when before he'd seemed bent on escape.

Leia left the 'fresher with the empty carafe she'd sought to fill with drinking water to find Han kneeling on the floor. He went along the wall, quick but thorough, marking certain jewels with a small oil pencil from a slot on his gunbelt, draped now over the back of a chair.

There was something telling about that, too, the casual way Han had undone his rig and slung it there, moved easy across the room toward the bed, shirtless and barefoo—

"It's a pattern," Han said, glancing up as Leia reappeared at his side. "See it?"

Leaning closer, Leia looked. The colors were indistinct in the dim, but in his left hand Han held a slim glowpen, also from his belt. Looking between her face and the wall he shone it on one line: first a red stone, then coral, then orange, then yellow, then tan. And then he leaned back from the waist so she could see them all together.

"It's the colors of the Corellian flag," Leia heard herself murmur.

Han's eyes closed for the briefest moment, his smile serene, as though savoring her. With a bare shoulder, Han nudged Leia's leatherbound leg; Leia shocked herself by almost threading her fingers into his thick tumble of hair. But he was looking up at her again, waggling his sandy eyebrows in gleeful conspiracy. Han clamped the end of the glowpen between his teeth, handing Leia the scanner. He rocked back on his bare heels and rose, swift and easy, to his full height. Two long strides backwards widened the beam so Leia could see other arrangements.

"It's a whole lotta world-colors, I figure," Han said, slightly garbled around the light in his mouth. He pointed with his pencil. "That one's gotta be somethin'—"

"Myrkr," Leia breathed, running her fingers over the row of black, silver, and pewter. The thump of her heart rising to the bassline of the propulsive music.

Popping the light from his lips, Han snapped his fingers in happy approval. "Knew you'd know 'em. I know how to _get_ there, but I never exactly—uh, had formal schoolin' until—ah, let's just say Roaky Laamu had real good grades."

"Han Solo had excellent scores in the Imperial Academy," Leia said. "Astrophysics, Thermodynami—"

He shrugged. "Anyway. Power gem is blue," he said. "Ain't it? So all we gotta do is narrow down which planets fly blue colors, and—"

"Yes, power gems are..." Leia frowned. "Well, more of a blue-green."

They looked at the wall, at the multitudes of blue, green. Everything in between. Looked back at one another.

Han gave a decisive nod, crossed around the bed, and grabbed a bottle Leia hadn't noticed from its chill-sleeve.

"Garwillian," Han marvelled, squinting at the label. "The good stuff."

"Han," Leia said.

"Ach, c'mon, Princess. I'm dyin'. I don't wanna die. You want me to _die?_ "

"Champagne won't—"

"Listen." He smiled at her, wide, persuasive, charming. "Chewie 'n' me ran a few crates of this just before we met the kid. S'a good omen."

Clamping plump bottom lip in his white teeth, Han popped the bottle with attractive ease. Considered the crystal flutes, then shrugged and loped back to her without. "Hey. We're married, right?"

Courteously Han offered her the bottle first. Leia hesitated, but raised it to her lips. Closing her eyes in bliss as ice-crisp bubbles slaked away the dryness, the stress.

She opened her eyes to find Han close, still smiling at her, but with less charm and more gentleness. Kept his look on her as he took the bottle, until his eyes fluttered helplessly closed on his long, rolling swallow. He made a low, ecstatic sound that shaded mournful.

"Gonna regret this," Han sighed, beatific.

XXXXXXXXX

"I'm just sayin'," Han said, broadly gesturing with the bottle. "That not all of it is bullsh—"

"Be careful," Leia said, eyeing his bare feet, planted wide on opposing arms of the wingbacked chair he'd lugged to the wall so he could finish the last, top row of stones. Over the last three hours Han had worked ahead with his pencil, marking all gems that were blue, green, or some combination. Leia followed, scanning each, checking and double-checking the readings. Some had faint spark—but that was something her mother had told her, about jewels. Many held life, the pressurized life of their earth. That was why they symbolized so—

"Naaaaah. That's another thing about Corellians, Sweetheart. Great balance. Don'worry about me." Han pressed a palm to his chest, slick now with sweat to the point that he almost cast reflected firelight.

In truth, Leia was uncomfortably hot herself, but all she had under her sweater and leggings were small shorts and molded camisole. She'd left her tropical fatigues and blouse on the Falcon—for tomorrow morning, she'd packed more leather and wool. She did not feel like breaking her work momentum to put on sleepwear.

"...I mean sure, Corellisi got this circulation thing but it's good too 'cos—" Han gave a dreamy, filthy grin, then shook his head and held up a prohibitive hand at himself. "S'enough." He leaned over to thump the champagne on the credenza atop which Leia worked, pointed a warning finger at the bottle as though it may jump him the second his back was turned. "Better comm 'em again."

With a reckless, elegant leap from chair to bed, Han scooped up the hotel comm and punched the _O_ with a knuckle. Kneeling on the credenza, Leia gulped a bubbly mouthful and laughed after him. "Han. You've tried the desk fifteen times. What makes you think—"

"Oh hiiiii there," Han purred into the comm, winking at Leia, pressing in the earpiece. Bouncing slightly on the mattress, Han hitched his slim hips side-to-side to the music; utterly out-of-character, celebratory, silly, like something in a smashball ga—

"Kay listen: me and Her Wifenessness?" Han beamed at Leia so hard, with so much naked affection, that it stopped her laughter. "Got a problem here, which: one, heat exhaustion, and b,"

Leia scanned three more dead jewels in the interval that Han listened to the front desk.

"No, fella, I _can't_ turn the music down. Funny you should—"

She pressed her hand to the back of her mouth in helpless laughter. Something about the way Han was marching up and down the mattress, sinking in as though into snowdrifts. Long legs working, fencing with that finger of his. Absurd, comical, yet—well, that radiant skin, that V of muscle at his middle that led into his trousers.

Leia jerked her eyes back to her work. How much had she had to drink? Too much. Dud stone, dud stone, another—

"Yeah I read the sign, yeah I can read _Aurebesh,_ what you take me for, huh?" Han spat, through an incredulous smile. "I don't _care_ what some droid from Tatooine toldja, Jacko, it's too hot and there ain't no drinkin' wate—ohh no: don't you sahsahlah me! no, damnit _noh_ _sahsahlah_ —"

Han stopped dead, his face stormy. "Fucker killed the comm!"

He leapt to the floor, glowering, and paced the room. Bare feet leaving big clean prints in the snowy carpet. And Leia thought—or felt, in that new way she had, a feeling in her chest that had risen in the ash of Alderaan: a phantom pain, a compensatory sense—that luxury frightened Han Solo.

"What is sahsah—"

Still Han prowled, all outraged pride and defiance. Stopped at the broad sheet of transparisteel that led onto the balcony. Tugging on a recessed latch, he swore softly to find it held with a codelock.

Han dug into a pocket of his bloodstripes, dragging them farther down his hips. After a moment of fiddling with the lock, he slipped the thin metal tool between his slanted lips. Scanning six more stones, Leia had given up on his answering when Han glanced across the room at her, slotting the pick to the side of his mouth with a quick flick of tongue.

"Just somethin' we—uh, they say." He waved his hand at the city lights, far below, their shine prettily shattered by snowfall.

"Where?" With his back returned to her, Leia could not stand the heat anymore. She rose on her knees and peeled her sweater over her head.

"Y'know, ov—" Han stopped as though he'd been slapped, watching Leia stand straight on the bureau's greel-wood top. She had long since unstrapped the knife, but shimmying out of the leather took long seconds and Han watched, rapt, through every one.

Then, waking with a hybrid wince—thwarted resistance, guilt, want?— Han looked back at the lock. "Over there," he muttered. "Estok."

"What is Estok?"

"East Coronet. A people, a...place? Speak _Olys._ I—" He gave a hard laugh. "What is this, Sweetheart, language class?"

She said it without thinking: "I want to know your tongue."

Han jerked back to her, his eyes wide, between blue and green. Leia had not meant to provoke, yet she wished she could scan that shade like stones, know where Han was on the spectrum between wary and enticed.

"I like learning languages," she elaborated. "Luke says Tatooine has forty names for sand."

His face changed at the mention of Luke. Hardened, yet somehow appeared relieved. "Well, Corellia has one," Han said flatly. " _Sand._ There you go. Lesson one."

"You are as boundlessly generous as they say, Flyboy."

Finishing her section Leia climbed down from the bureau, crossed the floor to the bed. Again he watched, full lips parting enough that she was sure the metal pick would fall. Leia scaled onto the broad top of the headboard, nimble, walking it heel-to-toe like a balance beam to reach the next candidates.

The pronounced male apple in Han's throat gave an urgent dip. "Hoooohhh—kay. Princess. Why doncha let me—"

"Alderaanians have good balance, too," Leia said, turning at the end of the beam just to prove she could, even tipsy. Crisp and clean on the ball of her foot, the other extended, prettily arched. Arms extended, balletesque. Thinking of Caran, her physical education teacher, Leia glanced closer at the top row of the gemstone wall.

 _Oh._ She closed her eyes, stretched to touch her fingers to these stones. This row, this series of colors, of course. Of course this standard would be the last.

Sky-blue, lake-blue, green, cream. Then blue again, deeper: the Cobaltia Sea.

 _Home._


	4. Chapter 4

Han had his eyes closed, head back in relief, into the icy breeze pouring through the door he'd managed to cycle open. He'd seen women before, sure, in a hell of a lot less; the white top and shorts—Alliance-issue, Han knew because he'd picked the crates up from Rhinnal—was like a modest bathing suit.

But this was _Leia_ wearing it.

And there was there was something about Leia in that white jersey, the way she shaped it—and not just with the curves of her body, though _that_ was...yeah. Wow. But mostly it was the way the skimpy clothing showed how Leia used her body. Lived in it, moved. The ways it was hers, could be no one else's.

The lithe daring of Leia up on that headboard, the strength and grace and independence.

It wasn't her elusiveness that got him. Han had been around. He knew how men and women talked in bars, about their conquests: _hard to get_ and all that. But Han had never been a guy for the chase, whatever that was, whatever that meant. He'd always had his own course plotted out and it was fast. Too fast for the burden of anyone else, no matter how warm and sweet the weight. And now this and he—ah, he did not want to hurt her, he did not want to _hurt_ her. He hadn't meant to hurt her, back there on the ship but it, wasn't it _better_ —

All a guy like him could do was behold her.

No cold water meant no cold showers, so Han kept his back to her a little longer, fingers hooked at the back of his neck. Eyes closed. Face upturned to the blowing snow, he felt flakes settle and melt in his lashes. It was good to know he could grab a handful of snow if he had to, but it'd be hard to explain to Leia just why he wanted it down his pants.

Want? Hells. It was nyiad, at this point.

So it took Han a minute, especially over the libidinous music, to notice the beeping. It was brisk, chirpy, like Luke's sassmaster of an astromech unit. And there was no way even that dork at the front desk would work Artoo into a shag playlist, so—

Han didn't turn; he spun and landed facing Leia. Facing Leia's back, her beautiful back and waist and bottom, her braided head and arched feet as she reached up, up. Almost climbing the wall, fingers of her free hand splayed, whole body rigid with the futile effort to reach what her scanner had finally detected.

He was on the bed before he knew it. Knowing without being told it was her who had to do it. Fell on his knees like any loyal subject and Leia, intense and shaking, leapt down from headboard to mattress and slung her legs over his wide shoulders, taut thighs at his ears, curved feet turned tight to his ribs. Han wrapped his hands at the tops of Leia's legs and stood under her slight weight, careful, fast. And using him she rose enough to touch the power gem, at last.

Leia tried to slip the edge of a fingernail under the glossy dome.

"That ain't," Han said, "hang on. I got—"

Han linked her ankles in one hand at his chest, right about where she'd strung that gold medal. Slipped the other hand into his trouser pocket. For his lock pick again, several filaments of metal he'd woven together into a stout but pinpoint tool. He passed it up to her, took the scanner in trade and dropped it lightly to the mattress.

And in what would forever be one of the most erotic moments of Han Solo's life, Leia stretched from him; bottom rising from his shoulders, firm belly pressed against his skull, toes pushing erratic at his torso; thighs trembling over his temples, muffled music pulsing through her. One hand knotted in his hair, Leia stretched up, up, focused and intent, and slipped the point of the woven chisel he'd given her under the rim of gem.

Plaster dust sifted into Han's face. He blew it away, breathing jerkily, knowing it meant success. The both worked toward it, strained toward it, and when the stone finally popped free Leia gave a greedy, completed sound that made Han reel, a little, on the cushioned give beneath his bare feet.

"Alderaan," Leia gasped. "Han. Alderaan." And she curled around his head to show him the smooth blue stone; serene but there was a spark to it. Seemed to Han he could see it, too.

XXXXXXXXX

It was four am. Han offered to let Leia wash first, she was near-staggering now with fatigue. But Leia was almost shy when she told him to go ahead, that with all her hair, she took longer. So he went ahead.

When they traded rather bashfully off, moving carefully around one another in the 'fresher doorway—Leia still in her underthings, Han in a towel slung at his waist—he crossed to the balcony door and whooshed it mostly closed. There was still a crack of gusting air, but that would keep the temperature just about—

The fire was out. Sex music still playing, sex lights still fixed and dim, but the room was becoming, even to Han's higher temperature, noticeably chilly.

 _Petty fucker._ Han hissed between his teeth. Grabbed up the comm, knowing even as it blipped and beeped that no one would answer. He could almost hear the prick's smirk, watching the comm unit light up at the front desk: _cool enough for ya?_

He supposed they could just clear out. But the trains would be shut down for the night, and a hovercab was just one more strange face that Han had no interest in introducing to an almost-finished mission. Leia's first, and he was gonna go into that High Command briefing and rave up and down about her prowess. Her brilliance, perseverance, skill. Best part? it was all true. Flopping to the couch, Han raised a triumphant fist, goofier than he'd've allowed if Leia was watching.

Might leave out the part about the drinking. And the way Leia's legs felt around his neck.

His mission leader came out of the 'fresher, girlish and rosy, softly braided and in the smallest size of unisex Alliance sleep-clothing (also picked up from Rhinnal). Leia looked at Han, stretched on the couch with his calves crossed on the armrest as though he _liked_ his beds too short.

She was shivering.

His lips tugged to the side, regretful. "That petty fucker at front—"

"Han. You are not sleeping there."

"Ach. I'm be fine,"

"Well, I won't. I need your mighty Corellian wattage. Stop being a sudden gentleman and get in that bed; I'm not going to end this mission dying of exposure."

He stood slowly in his purple t-shirt and ripped pants.

"Your poor owl! He must be frozen."

Han grinned, grateful for the joke as they approached the bed. "Chewie thinks it's a seal."

Leia yawned and laughed at once; he let her get into bed first. "Is this a queen?"

"You tell me, Princess," he yawned back. "I ain't royalty."

"But surely," Leia volleyed, fighting her eyelids, "you've seen more beds."

He laughed softly. "...not in fancy hotels," Han said. "No more questions. You're gone on your feet."

As they burrowed into synthfurs and duvets, Leia wriggled slightly closer to Han's heat, but both observed a genteel distance. Maybe absurd now that she'd had her thighs wrapped around his ears—then again, maybe more necessary than ever.

"You never told me what _sahsahlah_ means."

 _Yeah, 'cos someone peeled off her clothes,_ Han almost said. Did say, "No more _questions."_

"That was a statement." Leia poked at her pillow. "The...phrase? seems to upset you."

Han bent an elbow behind his head. Picture came to mind, then, of The Number Five Kasava, an Estok bar with a grubby pawnstall in back. Run by a Twi'lek name of Jav. Fenced the stones young Han kept back from his tithe to Shrike. Jav was no hero; mean je'boe'i to the bone, but with more code than most of his type. Never told Garris Shrike, when they met, that his most talented teenaged thief was running a few jewels for himself.

By adolescence Han wasn't about waiting to be fed at anyone's whim. He wanted things for himself, had noticed girls, was sensitive about his scruffy, outgrown clothes. So yeah, he had rubies stuffed in his too-short cuffs, sea-stones in his socks; emerald promise rocks secreted in ripped seams in his pockets. He took these to Jav. None of it meant much to Han, these treasured milestones of other lives. Just as it didn't trouble the rich to pass him by, starving on the street when he was five.

But he did not steal soul-diamonds, not ever, _nyeve_. Not even when it meant taking a thrashing from Shrike.

Other kids did; Han didn't condemn. You'd do a lot to avoid the backhand swing of that poison ring. He just could not do it himself, touch those compressed ashes, the cherished fragments of someone's loved one. Shuddered to find them in a bedroom he'd climbed into, glowing in some place of honor, floating blue-white and holy above their repulsors.

Han always thought he could see some glint at the center, trapped. Tiny moth-wings beating against glass. If one believed in the soul, of course. Which Han Solo did not. Yet in pawners off-world, markets and bazaars, he shivered even now to occasionally see boosted soul-diamonds, shimmering in rows like accusing ghosts.

And if Han said, when Sali laughed or yelled at him, _take it go on you'll get the beats,_ that they gave him the creeps—which was the only way he could say, at fourteen or probably even today, that to steal death-stones would make him less than alive himself—she would snatch them and say, _sahsahlah, Solo. Sahsahlah._

"Upset? Naaaahh." Han's hand felt very heavy as he waved it. " _Sahsahlah_ means: you see it your way, I see it mine. It's for stuff like, uhhhmm—best smashball player of all time, right? Or whether the Force is real."

Leia laughed silently, half-asleep, to wonder how Luke would react to Han's correlation of these two great questions, and in that order. Probably with humor and patience, she thought with affection. Or maybe he wouldn't see offensive distinction at all.

"Point is, it's for the stuff that either don't matter one way or the other, or we can't answer. So why fight over it. I get that." Han muttered, eyes closed. "Just makes me nuts when people say _sahsahlah_ when there's...not opinion, like. Only fact."

"I used to sneak out," she said, from out on her own tide. "Of my bedroom. Down the wall, do you know? Trellis, vines."

Han blinked back to consciousness. Her comment like she'd plucked the memory of his break-ins from him.

"At the Eastern Palace. It's, it was, where we lived in winter." Leia paused. "I suppose that sounds profligate, to you. Ridiculous."

"No." Han said. "People come up how they come up an' anyway—"

He cut off the last: _You been taxed enough._

Listened instead, as Leia told him a secret: how she had wandered in the still night woods, outside the Eastern Palace, as a girl. Her solitary practise. Not quite a sleepwalk. Looking for something, always—and she once found a loth-cat. Not a pet, not domesticated; large, a lynx.

The cat was caught in a leg-hold trap.

Poaching was abhorrent to Alderaan, long-outlawed, long-obsolete. In a culture with socialized healthcare, education, eradicated poverty, abundant food—luxurious synth-furs, even—" _Why?"_ Leia's voice cracked over it, even yet. "So you see. We were not saints."

This was Leia's first experience that beings were beings: worldshare did not make one kin. For someone Alderaanian, on the Queen's crown lands, had trapped this poor wild animal for its skin, or maybe the trophy of its suffering.

Ferocious and bleeding, the lynx was too proud to howl yet so tough, so bent on raw life, it was trying to chew off its own paw.

"...yeah," Han said.

And Leia fought her righteous rage, her horror, to send comfort to the cat, or—maybe it was her rage that enabled her to— _oh Han, the poor panting creature—_ help it. She still did not know how she did it but the trap snapped open—no, the trap was _broken;_ the lynx sprang up, sprang free. Ran, but did not flee. Tracking bright globes of blood in the sharp snow.

Leia asked the groundskeeper to feed the cat during the warmer months; left him meat herself in winter. She used to glimpse him between the trees, later. For years. As she got older. The scar, that's how she knew him.

"Maybe he was lookin' out for you," Han said, drowsy enough to be fanciful. Thinking of another Corellian legend, the familiar, the protective companion creature. Told to him by the woman to whom he'd lost whatever passed for virginity in East Coronet. She wouldn't say her name; her hair was gold. Wedded, but Han did not guess that then. On her dresser she kept a brochure advertising starcruises to the Bright Jewel Cluster. First time Han flew through there with his new hairy life-debt hassle he thought of her; travelled that system so many times now, and Chewie his brother, Han conjured her in those stars no longer.

"Well. I saved him for naught," Leia choked. A watery laugh.

"No." Han said.

"Naught," Leia insisted, clumsy on the word, although it was simple Basic. But anathemic to Alderaan's conviction that all had purpose, all was precious. Alderaanians famously had no word for broken, nothing was irrevocable. Just things yet to be fixed.

Not like Estok, which had about twenty-six ways of saying something was wrecked. _Busted._ _Tits-up._ _Fucked_. But Corellians were real comfortable on the edge of the abyss. There was a word for that, too: _oblivyn._ So take it now: food, warmth, credits. Sex. Before there's nothing, because nothing awaits.

The lynx had a quick death, Han thought. A flare of green, wild as his eyes. And oblivyn.

"He got more life, Leia. You gave him more life. A meal a night. His freedom. No one wore that bastard as a coat. That's a fact."

Leia said it softly, woven irony and hope. "Noh sahsahlah?"

On instinct Han leaned over, pressed his lips to Leia's forehead. Did not kiss. _Sleep now, Sweetheart._ He said it in _Olys,_ beautiful rhythm that rose up in him. Flowed rather than spoke itself, generous river come to sweep them both to nothing.

XXXXXXXXX

Leia dreamed.

She dreamed of Han, first.

Her, Han, viewed as though from outside herself: her, Han, in his bunk on the Falcon. She knows his bare back, but it is new how it looks above her. How they look tumbled together. Crooked lips traversing the undersides of her arms. Lower. Crooked nose gently tracing the dip of her waist to the swell of hip. Snuffling roughly against her middle.

 _You'll scare the_ _cat-owl-seal-ghost,_ Leia says, placing a protective palm over the mascot at her chest that is washed almost invisible, now.

 _Ooooh. Better be quiet,_ _then._ Han is muffled by the purple cloth at his mouth. His smile teasing, daring, adoring. Gathering hem in his fingers and pushing it up, his motion as economical, elegant, as his eyes are hot and wild on her revealed flesh.

Lush net weave is jerked under Leia's hips. _Finally,_ Han breathes at the inside of her thigh, voice soft as his tug was terse, as the skin of his back is hot under her heels, as the fingertips against her are calloused. _This damn blanket pays off._

And his tongue is—

Her laugh breaks into a frank moan. His hair soft, too, where she clutches.

 _You like that?_ He murmurs slyly. Or shyly. Or some Han-hybrid that is sex, and wonderful, and new to Leia yet only hers. Hers forever.

Or as long as it takes to get to Bespin.

 _Oh,_ Leia gasps, _That old thing? I guess—_

And now Han laughs, half-collapsed, his forehead pressed to her hipbone. She could cry. Middle of space on sublight and her heart at hyper, all streaming silver speedy rush. Prickling her eyes even as his whiskers rasp affectionate attack, oh to know him, to know, to know at last. And he is hers. At least for now.

 _That old thing,_ Han growls, _cost me two hundred fifty credits_. And he ducks back to her with a kind of fierceness, as though there is more, always more of him, yet to give her and it hurts him to contain it.

Her fingers knot in his hair. She bites a cry into the heel of her hand. _Oh!gods—_

 _Goddesses, Sweetheart. And I'm gonna make you name 'em all._

 _Han—_

 _Han is not one of 'em._

 _I'm—_

 _ **You**_ _are. Yeah. You_ — Han moves up her body, oh, inside and his voice is tight and dark when he speaks it this way because he can't not: _Ah_ _Leia. Leia: valle, valle, valle._

XXXXXXXXX

Leia's eyes opened into sunlight, bright and harsh off fresh snow. Han was awake, looking at her. Shaken, searing. He opened his mouth as though to ask and she saw his eyes dart—just infinitesimally, but this was politics and intuition at once, the reading of the face, and she was best at it. Han flicked his gaze to the curve of their bodies together, where they'd intertwined like vines as they slept.

"I'm sorry," he said—stammered, when did laconic Han Solo ever stammer? "I didn't mean."

A rise of blood at his cheekbones that only seemed to highlight another hot rush that was obvious, and that he would obviously sooner perish than discuss. Half-asleep Leia felt such compassion for Han then, but also a lust, a dreamlike sense of possibility and possession. She trusted him, she knew then what they could be, or was still under enough to let herself know, with a sense of flooding wonder. She coul—

He moved his hips abruptly away from hers. And Leia woke fully into morning. She still knew the future. She still knew the truth.

But what she recalled from her dreaming wasn't Han, but Luke. Luke, his eyes blue and intense as power gems themselves, had taken her by the upper arms and said: _Sister, the jewel is false._


	5. Chapter 5

Han led her through the tavern, dark, loud and crowded even hours before twelve in the afternoon. The Number Five Kasava smelled of spice smoke, whiskey, crammed with beings of all persuasions. Han's broad shoulders steering them through, his step different on his own turf. Wary, cocky, aggressive. Other hand resting on the grip of his blaster, blunt message to the many eyes on Leia. That, and his other arm tight around her.

Han steered them through a gauntlet into a back room. It was lined with grimy, crammed shelves from floor to ceiling, dust collected on grease. Behind a transparisteel case filled with glittering stones of all colors, a huge, blue-skinned Twi'lek looked up, bared pointed teeth in a grin.

" _Solo._ "

"Jav."

"Haven't seen you since—you must have been still working for Shrike."

"Yeah, lotta time gone by," Han said neutrally.

"New pants. Heard you got the bloods. Congratulations." He made a show of removing his loupe-scan from one eye to peer at Han's legs. "How you trap a classy girl like this, Stretch?"

Under his arm, Leia felt Han tense, felt the infinitesimal slip into blaster stance.

Jav chuckled. Fixed malicious red eyes on Leia. She stared back, blue eyeskins under her black fringe. "Your man here. Skinny pickpocket wasn't always so pretty. Real gawky, est? Outgrew his clothes around the time he lost his cherry."

Han blanched. Watching the holoreel in his mind even as Jav spoke it: Big shipwelder walked into the Kasava and everything stopped, gleeful freeze. Everyone knowing—everyone but the idiot teenage thief nursing his cheap whiskey to keep from being thrown out into the snow—that the guy sneering _Hey, your pants're a little short, there, Stretch,_ was Goldie's man. About his pants, Han _did_ know. Like his ankles weren't cold? _Yeah, they're patched, too,_ Han drawled back, even as his heart hammered when it sunk in who the fella was. Later, snow pressed to his black eye, Han would never know why he said it, even though it was true: _And they're too small in the crotch._

"Pants fit good now, est?" Jav leered at Leia. Lekku waving unwholesomely, as though feeling for a blush.

"They're still too small in the crotch," Leia said.

Jav's mouth fell open. He laughed again. "I like you, Babe," he said, wagging a finger. "You, I help."

XXXXXXXXX

"Look again," Leia said. Her voice coiled so tightly, her fingers shaking.

Jav's hard face was surprised, then almost sympathetic. "You look. The loupe is good. Look for yourself."

Leia just stared, the closest Han had ever seen her to defeated. All color leached from her face.

"This ain't no power gem, Babe. I been doing this a long time, only ever seen one. And not for pawn. No matter what you heard, this—"

"Es sappirik," Han cut in. Terse. Alright, so it was no power gem. But he'd seen the scanner light up; it was _something,_ and a sapphire would at least fetch solid price, buy her some concussion missiles or...it would preserve her mission. They wouldn't go back to base empty-handed.

Han tried to think this bolstering arithmetic at Leia, share his lifelong conversion of despair into credits. The Bank of Solo. There was always a hustle, and this was theirs: no the stone was not magic, not the symbol of resurrection or reunion or immortality she'd longed for. It was not the soul-diamond of Alderaan. But it would pay out right now, at least a few grand. That would pad the coffers, buy bacta, bandages, food—

Jav said, "It's paste."

"No chance," Han snapped.

But he took the loupe-scan, squinted into it. And Han could see, at this exposure, the odd greasiness to the texture, the clouds and bubbles that spelled not riches from the earth but glue. _Nerf hooves,_ he thought bitterly _. More life._

"Tinted. It's a lab fake, great: you ain't suckers, but it's worthl—"

Leia's face was so white.

 _...lab fake?_

"Get the power scanner," Han said. "The good one."

Jav snorted, lekku almost describing laughter. "Sol—"

Han's neck prickled. "No more names." He popped the top on his holster. "This ain't a social call anymore."

Holding up a forestalling hand Jav reached under the counter, pulled out a screenplate, gleaming with red light. He laid the blue gem on; it flared white. "Well I'll be damned," Jav said. "It is running a lotta power—"

Leia brightened; it broke Han's heart. With one hand he jerked the jewel from the screen and with the other unsheathed his blaster. Threw the hunk of glue to the floor and shot it. Leia gave a terrible sound to see the half-orb rupture in a beam of light and heat. Han hated it for her, hated it _raw._ But there was nothing for it. Nothing for it.

"What the fucking!" Jav screamed, at the smoking streak on his floor. Han ignored him, kneeling swift to pull the blackened evil core from the seething gelatin-corpse of what was never Alderaan in any form. "Tracker," Jav breathed. "Bug? Imper—"

Leia flung up a hand, a rare graceless gesture.

"Enough."

Her command edged in plea, in rage, grief. Leia's cheeks hollowed. She bit back her own feelings, as she had certainly learned to from birth, in public at least. She set her spine. This woman who said _thank you_ in her sleep, because mannerliness and respect were of her tribe.

She tried a sickly smile; Han felt something splinter in his chest to watch Leia flail for her correct raising, even for this fucking grave-robber. "Thank you for your—"

Leia choked. Tried again to speak and failed.

Han reached for her; she recoiled. Turned and hurried, stiff and urgent, jerky marionette where last night she was gorgeously animal—walking the headboard, in his arms—out the back door of the bar.

XXXXXXXXX

Leia was faster than she should have been and Han was slower. Hungry, maybe slightly hung-over, Han collided with a flimsinews box, fell to his knees in the street to the amusement of all the same old drunks, the cons and thieves, the ones he'd somehow not turned into himself. He rolled back up into a run. Running after her along this familiar street, brickfront splashed in garish color: obscenities of word and image. Hatred, despair, boast, posture, curse. _Oblivyn._

 _Olys_ had myriad phrases for embitterment, failed striving, failed betterment; Han knew them all, his chest beat them out as he ran. To try in vain. To search in vain. To hope in vain. To work, wait, dream; parent, believe, reach, all in vain. Grieve. Even a song, played in vintner taverns: _Love In Vain_.

Not to fight, though. Fighting was never in vain, to Estok Coroneti. Not fighting, not fucking. Not gaming, and not drink. These base things were all worth it, no matter what. How to say—how to say that he—

Han took the duracrete stairs down to the underground rail platform three at a time. Didn't see her at first, almost panicked, but there Leia was: flickering between milling bodies. Dirty subterranean air blowing through her real hair. She stood down the crowded platform from him, stopped still. Staring at curved, rough-hewn bricks. Upon which, Han saw as he sped closer, weaving through commuters, was painted a face that he knew well.

A face, a form. Rich telltale hair, bold lips for bold words. Her expression wild and controlled at once. Unmistakably Leia, a stylistic scar to one facet of her beautiful face, warrior flair; delicacy and power to the curve of her bared shoulder. She raised a drawn bow, on it perched a falcon. She was not in white, not here in East Coronet. She wore scarlet, deeper than her mouth. Red for archaic vengeance: _blood oath._ Red for sex. Red for the ancient Corellian goddess, Athe, sprung whole and enraged from the skull of her sire. Cleaved herself free. Thought herself into being—

Scrawled in Aurebesh beneath: _The Heart of the Rebellion._

Han wavered the last step with the rightness. Leia stood before this graffiti portrait, hands splayed on it. He saw again the girl in that sinister corridor, hoisting that blaster, gorgeous, savage. Grievous with wrath. She was here, in this image: its depth, fury, grit, texture. Sex. Imperfect on the rough brick.

 _You exist._

Validation, pressure, gratitude, failure? Leia's eyes said all this, her actual beloved eyes turned to him, blue-cried skins trickling down her cheeks. Athe, the goddess born again and again in time. Han would have taken Leia in his arms, he had moved to take her in his arms, all posturing be damned—

"Papers?"

A chill fell on Han, even an overheated Corellian in this hot, packed train tunnel. He'd almost forgotten the way Imp officers phrased demands as questions, with sinister politesse. A way to make you complicit, as though it was only rational, moral, right, to betray yourself in their service.

And this officer was as elegantly dressed as all the rest. Not in a uniform but _plainclothes_ was not the word for the sleek gleam of his black synthleather trench. Similar sheen to his white-blond hair. His clear manicure, glinting on the hand outstretched to Leia. Leia, wigless and with her false irises streaking down her cheeks, standing right in front of the biggest sprung cover anyone could ever muster.

 _Imps._ Imps and their sick humor, Han thought, as he moved into his first soundless step.

His eye went quick and cold to the agent's other wrist. The one at his hip, the one not demanding, wore a datameter, chromium band studded with stones around miniature screen. Gaudy for the reserved taste on display in the rest of his dress. These stones real, of course, Han knew that. Looted from displaced, enslaved, massacred families. Empire grist.

A high level operative. Murderously high, if Han remembered his time in the Academy.

"Papers, Madam," the Imp repeated. Almost compassionate, his flinty eyes amused in quarter-profile to Han. Han moved closer.

Leia had changed. Not a fraud at all but a natural actress, nervous and flustered. A young wife, not disguised, just insecure about her own hair and eyes; crying in the wake of her loutish man. Her wedding band glinting in harsh fluoro light. "Oh yes of course Sir oh." Reaching into her satchel, rooting with charming and scatterbrained youth through her feminine items, bra, knickers. Not coquettish, not suggestive, not sexual bribery: just helpless female credentials. _I am woman. I am harmless._

And all this under the fierce literal image, the breasts and hips, dip of waist, bow and arrow, prey-bird familiar. Under the fertility and power and wrath of her own self. The Imp's face filled with indulgent patience. He touched Leia's wet cheek with a finger. Lifted her chin, turned her face this way and that. The Imp marvelled at her, even as he had no idea who she was. Every woman, flighty and pleasant to regard in pain.

And Leia—both Leias—held the Imp there in some weird thrall, combined power of image and flesh. _Little snake charmer,_ Han thought. Stepping closer. Closer, behind the bastard. Han felt his face tauten with hunt. Instinct. Keen. His own fingers ghosting over the tailored shirtcuff to find the band.

Han caught Leia's her half-lidded stare, helpless to stop whatever he transmitted to her with his own eyes. Admission, even a pride. Trust. Shared spite. A blaster mark, a trap, a lost planet. Spit in the eye of the man with the boot on the throat.

Han held her eyes, and even as Leia knew to not hold his anymore she seemed to be looking back, looking into him. Participating in his touch, the information through the rough pads of his fingers, finding their old sensors, their old calibration. Muscle tension, slipping along the links in increments. Precision the essence. Find the latch, pressure just under. The task of an abandoned life; the task of Leia's now. _Trust me,_ he told her. _Trust me._

The datameter sprung its grip, slipped off clean into Han's hand. Did not catch any fine blond strands that could sting the Imp into realization, because Han Solo did not fuck around. And now he walked off, doubled back, let himself become someone else. Felt himself slip into one of several rejected lives, guises: the swaggering Corellian caricature. Vykk Drago, Lon Scorpio; virile, stupid, brutal.

"Cira. Where you been." Han grunted. Seized Leia's arm, stern. So punitive that the other man was made free to relinquish Leia to his custody—it's a woman alone, emotional and unescorted, that offended. Han's machismo perfectly governed, authoritative, his stance cock-first. His own credentials. He shot the Imp a look, just conspiratorial enough. _Sexy, impossible women, right?_

The Imp handed back Leia's document, tipped fingers to his forehead at Han. _Good for you,_ that look said. Bold as brass, Han grinned back, took Leia's hand. Slipped her the databand. _There's your jewels, Sweetheart._

They had time for one step away. One second on the chronometer affixed to the ceiling, blaring now the arrival of the mag-lev train. One second before the spell was broken and the Intel Imp saw, really saw, the painting.

His blue eyes widened. Not the sweet pure laser blue of Luke but something false, something manufactured, nothing but meachanical tracker in the center. The Imp wheeled, took a step to give chase. Raised his wrist to his mouth to summon, to speak and at first Han thought the Imp's expression of shock was to find his datameter gone. But then he saw the sheen to Leia's face, steely and hard, the glint of light on a blade. He had no idea she could get her hand into her boot so fast, unsheath and flick, all at once.

 _Holy shit,_ is all Han could think.

Leia didn't stab, nothing so dramatic, so uncontrolled. As the Imp grinned at her, jagged teeth under all that smoothness, as he said, _Hello, Your Highn—_ Leia cut him on his raised bared wrist. Bladed him clean down the artery, to deliver a killer rush of venom. _Holy shit._ Almost a check-mark etched into his skin, finished, off her list; an economical, lethal fissure and _that, Princess, is how you run a mission holy shit_ —

There was time, on the Imp's face, for a comical pout. Because it hurt just a bit, at first. And Han grabbed Leia then for real, grabbed her and bullied her before him, running in the wake of the new train. Now he'd seen the glint of light off white armor that he'd known was coming; if there was one thing a street brat knew, it was for every rat you saw, think thirty-two.

The knife clattered to duracrete.

"Forget it," Han bellowed, as Leia turned instinctively. Shoving her now. "Run. Move!"

From behind them, the grind and froth of convulsions. People on the platform screaming to see the Imp, surely in obscene rigor. Leia did not smile but she splayed a hand in a certain satisfaction. Han choked laughter back to see it. Alive again, wrathful. Gorgeous creature.

 _Leia._ How he loved her.

A red bolt sizzled past his ear. Han curved around Leia as they ran along the slowing train, drawing his own blaster. Turning as he armed her toward the opening doors, knowing somehow they'd be there to grab her, his people, who had brought her to life in color. Who had seen, recognized, showed Leia her power.

He forgave Coronet a lot, for that. Maybe everything.

"Take the ship," Han snarled into her hair, his eyes brief-squeezed into rushing air, the smell of her, Leia, Leia. "Y'know the codes. Don't wait. Get the hells off-pla—"

Of course Leia tried to fight him then. And Han grasped her by the back of her collar, rough, rough and lifted almost like a loth-kitten and that was an indignity Han regretted when it really shoulda been a kiss, deep and real and true, because he loved her and that was the truth too. But the train was picking up speed now, the doors gliding slow-closed, and _Leia was getting the fuck outta here,_ she was getting back to Luke and Chewie even if East Coronet took his street ass after all.

Han hurled her; someone caught Leia, pulled her. He saw her hit the floor of the train car, he turned for one last look at her; and Leia was anguished, arching and struggling in some protective grip, shaking her head hard, arm stretched through the closing gap. Screaming Han's name; his real name, true.

He spun back, ran sideways leg-over-long leg and got off five shots; white armor shattered, flew. Quick, hot. Keeping one last bolt back, because _fuck_ you, right? He felt his lip curl in a grin. _Didn't letcha have Chewie and you can't have her you can do whatever you want with my empty hide but_ _ **she**_ _is_ _ **not—**_

A hand grabbed Han's collar too. Huge, attached to such a burly arm that at first Han thought it was Chewie, only—shaved? For who else could pull Han bodily off his still-running boots, haul him on the train, dump him like a sack of potamoes to the grated floor of the car.

"Nice shooting, blood," said the largest Estok Han Solo had ever seen, in a titan-size of first-class Bloodstripes. Hells, Han thought shakily, as he let the beast pull him to his feet, slapping his back, he probably earned those first day.

And then Leia was on him, in his arms, clutching and weeping, laughing and swearing, all trash compactor only one year later, one year of knowing her. "Ah c'mon Sweetheart y'know I'm a lucky bastard," Han laughed into her neck and Leia pulled back and wonderful wet eyes flared like she'd slap him if she was the slapping type but instead Han heard someone say,

 _Ain't you gonna kiss your man, Naboo? He just took out five'a them buckethead pricks._

And the elderly scolding usher from last night pointed sternly at the loveleaf strung from the train ceiling.

Han gave Leia the smallest smile, still breathing hard, his hair wild. Alive. If it was all the tiniest bit hopeful—that smile, those knitted brows, the gentle corrugation to his brow—it was mostly reassuring, cavalier, dismissive. _You don't hafta—_

Leia stood fast on a seat to reach him. A little taller, now, than him and Han's eyes widened in surprise and then fluttered closed as Leia pulled him close, bent her head and touched her lips to his. Soft. Raise of hair at the neck, electrical, the hum and rock of magnetic track.

Han has to pause to gasp, but he comes back.

Soft and almost tentative, but at the sound he? She?—one of them makes, a little moan that isn't sigh or triumph or claim or trust, revelation or relief but all those things at once, the kiss deepens. Deepens, deepens as the train picks up speed, as it climbs from underground to the raised rail in the sky.

At first the light is dots and dashes, flitting through splits and breaks in tunnel brick, then leaking through divisions in crumbling structures. Han's arms slip around her, Leia's fingers find his hair, he strokes her cheek with his nose. Impossible weakness in the knees. Her eyelashes against his skin. Their hearts do not slow from their running speed; Han's hand cups Leia's head and hers at his cheek and he yields grateful to the pressure of her parting lips, feel her opening herself, opening him. And at the sweet sweep of her tongue and the twining welcome of his, light breaks into the train, emergent. Shattered sparkling sun-off-snow, explosion of blue.

 _Get a room,_ someone called. And that's when Leia and Han broke apart in laughter, forehead to forehead. Alive. Together.

XXXXXXXXX

"I've never kissed anyone before," Leia said. Her lips curved in a pleased smile, curved like the accelerator couch where she sat. Her hands curved too, around a mug of kopi tea. Bootless, knifeless, still in leather and tight sweater. Her hair a messier arrangement than normal; her eye makeup a mess, black and violet.

But Leia's eyes themselves were sparkling, giddy.

Han stared. "You never been—"

"That's not what I said." Leia laughed. "I've _been_ kissed. Ugh. The first the crown prince of Kamino, when I was fourteen. He was sixteen; his family wanted us to marry."

"Uh. Whoa," Han said, studying his own tea. A red depth to it and that was there in Leia's eyes too; a heat. "How'd your parents...?"

A risky topic, especially after the day they'd had. But it felt right, it felt alright here in the main hold of the Falcon, on their way back to base with no electronic parasite set to wake any wasp's nest of TIES when they hit the blockade. _Fuckers._ Han would forever be enraged that they used the idea of Alderaan for _that,_ but there was sick Imp humor for you.

At least few of them had paid the price, Han reminded himself, glancing at the flashing datameter he'd sliced into, encrypt-streaming a seemingly endless series of intelligence, plans and maps ahead of them to High Command. That jackhole sadist had forgetten his training, like Imp 101: don't use your datameter as a storage device. Pick up information, send it on home to the mainframe. The thing was _stuffed_ with high-level data, enough that Leia had done a little crazed hopping dance all around the chiller, waving her fists.

 _Too busy getting his nails buffed!_ Leia cried.

 _Or hassling scared little girls at the train,_ Han said. Touched her brave, proud chin with his thumb. _Damn. Did he pick wrong._

And then the air was all heavy and starey again and Leia broke away to put the kettle on the cooker. _Fixed that for you,_ Han called after her. Cheerful, like. Just so she'd know there was no pressure. That they didn't have to talk about—

"No, my parents _were_ arranged, in a sense. But it was a love match. And they wanted that for me." Absently Leia stroked the green silk at her shoulders. "Anyway. The boy from Kamino leaned in to hang a peridot pendant from my neck—" Leia waved her fingers, dismissive not of the gift's merit, she was not spoiled, but of the ritual that had proved so meaningless. "Last minute, I turned my head. He licked the corner of my mouth. On holovision."

Han grimaced with such gratifying natural revulsion that Leia slapped his bared forearm in glee. "Oh, that's nothing. It's happened so many times. My cheek. My forehead." She patted her chin. Hair. Brandished her hands, palms and backs. Wrists, inner. Outer. "Here. Here." Top of her ear. Leia tightened her lips. "I always meant to—planned to meet someone. Of my own. But..."

She shrugged, not carelessness but wry sadness. Yielding to life, its wildness. "But a real kiss, _I_ wanted to choose."

Leia smiled behind her lashes, serene. "I wanted to choose. And now I have." She opened sly, dancing eyes.

Han thought his chest would burst with—what was this, warmth? Honor, as distinct from pride? To be chosen, by this person. Right now he'd let her stroke his head like he was some pet, he'd follow her out the airlock. He couldn't speak.

When he could, he said, "Well, I hope you've recovered okay. I can be a little..." He scratched his jaw. "...swooningly masculine, and up close—"

"Well, you certainly put the smug in smuggler."

"Cute." He flicked her a speculative look. "Y'know. In _Olys_ the root of _smug_ means handsome _._ "

"Really."

"Mmmm-huh. Go on, look it up." Han prodded her datapad. "No, hang on. I got that a little wrong. It's so hard to translate, a concept like..." He closed his eyes, his brow showy with angst. "Guess the closest you can get to it in Basic is _gorgeous..._ "

Now she laughed, rich and real.

Han made a vague gesture toward the ceiling. "or, uh...hard to look directly at, as are suns...exquisitely square-jawed, if you prefer."

"Interestingly scarred?"

His eyes widened in delight. "You think my scar is interesting?"

"The scar I can see," Leia said carefully, "is interesting, yes." She sipped her tea. "It's certainly a locus of... _conversation_ on-base."

"Is it."

"I have them too. The probe droid. Hard to see, but I can feel them." Leia cocked her head. "I'm almost— _proud_ is the wrong word. _Defiant_ is close. That's something there's no concept for in Alderaanian, not exactly—the closest notion is _righteousness_. But I—" She shook her head, short, sharp. "I'm angrier than that."

She blinked into her tea.

"I never saw my parents angry. I still wonder where it comes from. In me." Leia smiled sadly into her mug, then looked up. "I _do_ know I'm not Corellian. I hear I'm too short."

"I'm glad. I mean," The mischievous crescents of Han's eyes followed Leia as she rose, ready to wash and change before they left hyperspace. "I'd hate to have kissed you, then found out you're my long-lost sist—"

She hit him. " _I_ kissed _you,_ Hotshot."

He laughed softly at her, his eyes warm on her as she turned, fondly shaking her head. She paused at the tube of doorway. Then quarter-turned, lovely profile. Said it quickly, that hint of tenderness, unprotected.

"Han. I'm glad it was you."

She was gone.

Han leaned back in his seat, slinging up a knee, drawing the blanket into his lap. To his nose, when he heard the 'fresher running and knew she would not see. Smelled like her, like a breeze: sweet, not cloying. Free.

On the inside of his eyelids, Han saw a palace. A petty thief scaling ivy up one side; on the other, pretty princess climbing down. He would not rifle her enamelled boxes for their prizes, the Chalcedony Waves, the heirloom collar that would bind her always to privilege and torture.

And if he met her, in the forest, trailed by her lynx protector? She'd be so light she'd leave no tracks in the snow. A solemn, iridescent young woman in red robes. Her cat tracking ruby orbs, ivory glint of fangs. Eyes brief green murder in the dark.

Han would give them all back if he could. Drop them there in the snow, in tribute to her. Every stone he'd ever stolen. Every bridecharm, yearstone, cord of babes. Collect all those pawned soul-diamonds. Give everyone back their beloved lost.

He'd give it back, her planet vanished to emerald dust. Ante up the jagged unlovely mess of his heart. Just for a world where she did not bleed for her escape, and he smuggled nothing in his shirt.

But even with none of that at hand, he had seen the spark in Leia's eyes, the life. Nothing could defeat it, even death. Han ran the jewels in his head: tiger's eye, topaz, amber, warm chocolate stone. Matched them on that old flimsi chart: wisdom. Self. Kindness. Soul. All these colors something to sell. Now, maybe, something to keep. On a chain, close to the heart.

Han opened his own eyes. Couldn't control his eyes, feeling them beam helpless green towards his cabin, where she was. Who knows what they'd transmit to her after that kiss that—it, it, it—

 _Min min,_ his big dumb eyes would say, the second she walked back into the main hold. _Valle._

Leia. Leia, Leia, Leia, Leia.

 _Fuck it. Let 'em flash Leia! Min larel! on a loop around the godsdamned hangar. I love you. I love you; It's the truth._

Han couldn't help but picture just how a green stone would look, rich and deep against Leia's luminous skin. At rest on her own bare swell of breast as she slept in his arms, hair tumbled and loose. Sated. Safe.

The hyperspace alert rang out.

Maybe he'd give one to her, Han thought, as he got up. Yeah, an emerzel, next vintner. Depending on where they set up next. Hopefully somewhere, Han thought with rare giddiness, that had a little snow, once in awhile. Y'know. Just for atmosphere.


End file.
